Elon Musk’s Creator Payout Scheme Is a Foreign Influence Operation

Elon Musk’s new creator payouts need to be investigated as foreign interference in a federal election. Musk hand-picked several Twitter creators as recipients of thousands of dollars in earnings in what Twitter calls a “monetization” scheme for creators.

Most of Musk’s recipients were “far-right” creators espousing views Musk himself holds. But regardless of their political leanings, the scheme needs to be investigated as a way for foreign intelligence operatives to launder money into the hands of political influencers who align with their views and interests.

There are no publicly available criteria for inclusion into this lucrative club, and the final recipients are selected by human screening for inclusion (the identity of the human screener is unknown).

Twitter claims the payouts are determined by the number of replies and influencer receives on their Twitter posts. This is an imprecise and uneven criteria because Twitter is awash with armies of paid trolls and bots who reply to cont…